TOPIC: Restricting users to use start menu options in 2003 domain

We are running Windows Server 2003 Domain, with Windows XP SP2 Clients( around 35).
We have some users in a limited access group. they are limited only to Office, yahoo messenger,Firefox,internet explorer and adobe reader. I want to customize the start menu through group policy for entire domain.

Please tell me how to hide the remaining applications which are installed in the systems for other users who have right to use those softwares. But how do i customize the start menu so that only those programs are listed??

This has to be done for existing and also new users which will be added to this group in future.

Create your customised Start Menu with the shortcuts you require from that group and put this on a network share somewhere. Then within group policy, for that group, point the Start Menu to the one created using its UNC path.

Blimey, if i can remember this as i don't do much Windows stuff these days. If anyone spots any mistakes then feel free to post an update :wink:

Create a folder on your network somewhere and share it. Set everyone to Full Control (or authenticated users) so you can configure seperate start menus for different groups.

So, if i have a server called DC1, i create a new folder on one of my NTFS drives called StartMenus and share it as StartMenus. If i have a group called Finance and want to create a folder, create a folder called financeMenu under this new folder i have created above;

e.g. f:\StartMenus\FinanceMenu

Now you can put your links and StartMenu's etc... into that folder.

Now, we need to edit Group Policy;

Open Group Policy (i would download the free Microsoft Group Policy Management Snap-In which is better then using the default tools)

Within your Finance OU, create a new group policy called StartMenu's or something (if you already have a group policy created in this group then you can edit that one.

No, within the group policy, you have User Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Folder Redirection, now Right Click on the Start Menu and click Properties. Change the Setting to "Basic - Redirect everyone's folder to the same location" and change the Target folder location to "Redirect to the following location" and for the path, enter the UNC path such as \\dc1\StartMenus\FinanceMenu

I think that should be it.

(there are loads of other tweaks you can do under "User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar".

Since this has been created in the FinanceOU, it will only happen to users within that OU.